Chapter Six – Small Annoyances

As the four women continued working away at their fries and beers, the conversation slowly veered away from boyfriends. Instead they started in on another work related topic. It didn't have any gory details thankfully, but it did allow them to vent.

"You have no idea what a pain in the ass a boss can be until you've met Strauss," Emily told Olivia and Amanda. "Cross a master manipulator with a self-centric bitch with her own agenda who will never accept anyone's opinion but her own and you might get close to her."

"That bad, huh?" Olivia asked after she finished her last sip of beer.

"You have no idea," Emily reiterated. She'd had issues with Strauss since the moment she'd arrived at the BAU and realized the political games their section chief was playing.

"Remember the case where you and Hotch showed up to help even after you'd both requested transfers?" JJ asked, transfer being the kind word for Emily's request to resign from the FBI instead of spying on her unit chief to Strauss.

"Strauss nearly blew a gasket!" Emily cried out as she thought back to that day.

"It only got better when you said you were going to see if you could get invited into the house we were monitoring," JJ added.

"Why?" Amanda asked, rather curious about why they would want to get invited into a house that was under surveillance.

"A father was using his son to kidnap women. We knew a woman was being held captive inside their house," Emily explained. "I was going to get the proof we needed to go in."

"And Strauss refused, saying since you had resigned you were no longer an agent, and she wouldn't let you get involved in the case."

"I just threw it back in her face," Emily confirmed with a grin.

It had felt like a major win to her. She hadn't been willing to play Strauss' game from the beginning, and resigning had been her way of showing that. This second refusal to follow Strauss' plan was just the cherry on top.

"Oh yeah?" Olivia asked, the question of how obvious but unasked.

"I told her if I wasn't an agent then I was just a civilian, which was even better for me. She couldn't stop a civilian from walking up and knocking on a little boy's door."

"The look on her face after that…" JJ laughed. It was like she'd taken a nice big bite of a lemon and had followed it up with a hard punch to the face. "Usually Strauss is the shark when you face off with her. It was nice to see it turned around for once."

"Sounds like Tucker," Olivia mused. She'd been careful to take a look around and be sure there wasn't anyone at the bar that she wouldn't want overhearing before she began. "A shark that locks on to you and never lets go."

"Who?" Amanda asked her brow furrowed. She hadn't had the joy of meeting him yet.

"A creep from IAB. He's had it out for SVU for a long time. Trust me; you don't want to go up against him. He doesn't see reason."

Emily snorted. "Do they ever?"

Not seeing reason could fit Strauss to a T too.

"I knew a guy like that from my old squad," Amanda told them. "Only his not seeing reason was more from a lack of common sense."

She smirked, and the others knew this was going to be good. People who lacked common sense were usually the best main characters in comedy stories.

"He decided it would be a good idea to prank our commander for April Fool's. You know, just for fun."

"The commander?" JJ asked incredulously. If you were going to prank someone, most people wouldn't pick the person in charge. Lack of common sense number one right there.

"Yup."

"What did he do?" Emily demanded as she rested her elbows on the table and leaned forward eagerly.

"He glued the commander's desk drawers shut. Figured it would last a little while, a day or a few good tugs, but that would be it. Unfortunately for him, he found the one type of Crazy Glue or Gorilla Glue or whatever that actually works the way they say it does."

"It didn't open at all?" Olivia gasped.

"Nope. No matter how hard anyone tried. Poor Greg was stuck doing overtime with a flat headed screwdriver and every other tool that had even the slightest chance of working to try and break the glue seal he'd put on," Amanda laughed.

"It made for some difficult days since our commander couldn't get to any of his supplies or forms. We were loaning him things constantly, which only brought up the prank again every time he had to ask for something he could have easily found in his desk. The only saving grace was that Greg did this before the commander had come in to work, so at least his car and house keys weren't in his desk yet. I don't even what to think about what would have happened if they had been."

"I bet the commander was steaming!" Emily exclaimed. She'd seen how pissed off Hotch could be over something a lot smaller than that. If someone had tried to mess with his desk, not that anyone in the team would be dumb enough to, Hotch probably would have killed them.

"Hell yes. Greg had crap work for months after that. Whenever there was a bad job that nobody wanted to do, he got it. Extra paper work, canvassing in the rain, talking to a particularly deluded perp or alleged victim whose story didn't add up in the least. Anything really. Not that I minded. Aside from the smell from his various dumpster diving expeditions of course."

They all laughed, reveling in the idiot's misery. He'd been asking for punishment with that prank and gotten exactly what he should have in return. Each of them had wound up with the short end of the stick before. It was nice to know that sometimes it was actually given to the person who deserved it.

Author's Note: Last chapter is up tomorrow.